Creating an online presence for your business is a challenging – but lucrative – endeavor. Forming a comprehensive and useful site requires a vision followed by thorough execution, so the ultimate goal of turning traffic into consumerism can be achieved. An online presence can spell growth or folly for a business if it is not created with customer experience in mind.
One tool for online marketing and sales is funnels. Sales funnels create a sequence that converts traffic into sales. There are a few funnel creation tool options on the market, but the focus at this time is ClickFunnels. This resource allows businesses to create sales or marketing funnels without the added stress of coding or designing.
ClickFunnels offers free accounts and a trial period where you can optimize your site to drive membership, collect data, and secure more sales. In this article, we’ll talk you through how and why to use ClickFunnels, and how to do it for free.
What is a Sales Funnel?
The primary product of ClickFunnels – the main reason people use it – is to create a sales funnel. This is a tool used to capture traffic and channel them into a purchase. It follows a series of steps that harness the thought processes of a consumer to lead them towards a goal. Most often, the goal is that the visitor places an order on your website.
As the name implies, a sales funnel starts with a big pool and ‘funnels’ people to where they need to go. Good sales funnels do this by using clever marketing techniques to predict what a visitor wants and leading them to it. We’ll discuss how to do this later.
The funneling starts the moment someone enters your site. It breaks a customer’s journey towards making a purchase into small steps – garnering interest and trust, and nurturing the lead into a sale.
What Are the Steps of a Sales Funnel?
With ClickFunnels, sales funnels are broken down to make the process simple and user-friendly.
A general funnel looks like this:
1. A person visits your landing page. They are exposed to your business and the products/services being offered.
2. They are greeted with an offer – usually in the form of providing their email address in exchange for a money-off coupon or incentive. This works to build trust for the customer and allows you to collect email data through which you can re-target them later.
3. Using email data, you continue to provide the product, pricing, and sales information to further build a customer relationship and secure repeat sales.
4. Target the customer via email urging action on a particular item or sale.
5. The customer (hopefully) now knows and trusts your business and follows through with a purchase.
A sales funnel can also be broken down into the following stages: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action.
Here is a more detailed view of what those stages might look like:
- Awareness is used to pull in traffic and the target audience to know your brand and products.
- Interest is spurring the target audience to need to know more about products or services.
- The decision leads prospective clients to form positive decisions around your business.
- Action is where the money is exchanged for info, value, services, or products.
What is ClickFunnels?
This online software has guides and features to help users set up conversion funnels for their websites. Features include integrating an autoresponder, payment mode, testing the funnels, and cloning funnels for other services or products.
Understanding and utilizing funnels correctly leads to an increase in sales and improves SEO analytics. The company has over 100,000 users – and millions of funnels have been created using this resource. The ClickFunnels difference is in the accessibility, ease of use, and success that users have had when using the service.
The main advantage of ClickFunnels is that it offers one platform to accomplish many tasks. Before ClickFunnels, it was necessary to operate from several platforms or learn to code to accomplish tasks.
Pre-ClickFunnels, businesses may have had to do the following from different platforms or pay separate fees for each:
- Hire a web content developer to create the website
- Pay monthly or yearly hosting service subscriptions
- Use third party membership builder
- Buy and maintain autoresponder subscription
- Find A/B split-testing tools
Now, this service condenses all of this to one account and platform. From the ClickFunnels platform, you can build:
- Landing pages
- Membership websites
- Opt-in pages
- Webinars
- Normal business blogs and websites
- Sales funnels with up-sells
We have created this guide to understanding ClickFunnels and how to score an account for free. Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.
How to Create a ClickFunnels Account and Start the Free Trial
It is easy to set up and get started on a free ClickFunnels account. Visit the official website to set up an account and a free 14-day trial.
From there, you will connect to the sign-up page to provide relevant information. After providing an email address, full name, and password, you will click “Create My ClickFunnels Account Now.”
Next is billing information. The company keeps a credit card on file to charge after the free trial.
You then choose from two plan options: Starter Plan or Full Suite Plan. The latter provides more features, but the first is a great option if you are just testing the waters. During the free 14-day trial, you get access to all the features available on your chosen plan.
Now, you’re good to go! After choosing your plan, you will be directed to the membership section where you can begin perusing the many features of the site.
How to Start Using ClickFunnels
The trial period is your chance to explore all the available features. From the membership section, you can do just this!
To start with, check out some of our favorite features:
- ClickFunnels Game, which teaches you how to create a funnel
- A dashboard view to look at opt-ins, sales, and page views – and explore the conversion rate
- Live contact activity to view real activities across all funnels
- Favorite funnel as a module to link to the activity of your favorite funnels
How Do I Set Up My First ClickFunnels Sales Funnel?
In order to move people from interested to invested, you have to set up the funnel!
It starts by following these steps:
1. Build your funnel by logging in and choosing “Create Funnel” and then “Sales Funnel” on the left-side menu bar
2. Name the funnel so you have something to reference if you need to go back and make edits. You can also add group tags at this stage to stay organized
3. Select preferred templates by browsing the options and finding what suits your needs. You can change the template at any time but you will lose edits
4. Use the editor to customize the appearance and content of each page to match your brand, sales, and message process
5. Use the Order Form Page to start adding products. Keep in mind you might need to distinguish between products with a monthly subscription or one-time payment
6. Create a fulfillment email that is sent after a purchase is made
7. Celebrate – you created a fully-fledged funnel!
After you get the hang of it, you can create more complicated funnels.
Some advanced options available through ClickFunnels include:
- Membership site funnels to create membership and generate recurring income
- Webinar funnels to promote and collect registrations for webinars
- Online course funnels to host and sell online courses
- Lead capture funnels designed to grow a mailing list
What Are the Benefits and Features?
Overall, ClickFunnels offers a lot for the price and many businesses see a profit on the investment after just a short while. It helps a website become goal-oriented rather than a collection of random pages with information. It is made for business owners and is designed with you in mind.
The editing features are very user-friendly thorough customizable templates that do not require coding knowledge. Currently, there are over thirty templates offered! The uses of each template vary, but some functions include surveys, thank you pages, order forms, webinar pages, and more.
Additionally, built-in features include an auto-responder function to communicate quickly and efficiently with customers. ClickFunnels integrates with third-party sites for auto-response options through sites like GetResponse, Constant Contact, or MailChimp. Auto-response tools are valuable marketing tools because you can produce and schedule emails or newsletters with ease. It tracks open rates, mail lists, and more to provide marketing data.
Businesses also thrive with the invoicing system that can track billing information through the sales templates. This helps in traffic to sales conversion because visitors do not have to leave your site to make the payment. All the steps are bundled into one platform and integrated so users can pay via PayPal, Stripe, or any number of payment solutions.
To put it simply, the advantages of ClickFunnels include:
- All-in-one selling platform for online businesses
- Marketing funnels are simple and quick to create
- Fantastic email autoresponder options
- Multiple integration options on one platform
- A/B split testing and tracking of consumer conversion
- 24/7 customer service
- 14-day free trial
- Save money and time on marketing/sales design
What Are the Cons of ClickFunnels?
There are many benefits to this type of resource, but that does not mean drawbacks do not exist. Below are some of the common complaints.
The main disadvantage is the monthly fee, which can be steep to rising or small businesses.
With so many features, some report it does not feel like the site excels in any one area since it is designed to manage every aspect of a sales process from start to finish.
Customization is not enough for some businesses and the landing pages can feel too simple.
What is the Cost?
In terms of cost, the Starter Plan charges $97 per month. It allows for 20 funnels maximum, 100 pages, and a max of 20,000 visitors. The Full Suite plan has unlimited funnels, landing pages, and visitors at the price tag of $297 per month. Please note these prices are accurate at the time of writing but may change at the discretion of ClickFunnels.
You can cancel the plan during the free trial if you find ClickFunnels is unlikely to meet your business needs. After the trial is over, you cannot cancel your purchase for the month.
The Plans
As mentioned, there are two main plans for ClickFunnels: the Starter Plan and the Full Suite Plan.
Under the Starter Plan, you might feel a little more limited. The account will be restricted to just twenty funnels and one hundred pages. Some of the features that will not be available include the email autoresponder and the Affiliate Management System.
The Full Suite Plan offers a lot more at a steeper cost. This plan will allow you to use the Affiliate Management System and access the email autoresponder. Some tools you can use here include e-mail broadcast, automation rules, and email scheduling. You will also have more funnels, pages, and visitors available to you.
Choosing between the two largely relies on the needs of the business. If your business is small enough, you might find twenty funnels are more than sufficient for your needs. If you need to be in constant contact with clients, you might find the Full Suite plan is more flexible in terms of what you need. Keep in mind that the cost is high to cover the plethora of features being offered on this site. Additionally, you are paying for security, overheads, and more.
Who Uses ClickFunnels?
The main examples here involve turning a browser into a buyer of online goods. However, with hundreds of thousands of clients, ClickFunnels has helped many types of businesses and entrepreneurs succeed. Past and current clients include freelance workers, bloggers, non-profits, coaching/consulting, and forms of e-commerce.
ClickFunnels works for more than just people looking to sell a physical product. It also works to help guide people to make appointments, book services, and donate to non-profits. Other users include membership websites, webinars, retail, and business-to-business. The clientele is diverse just as the sales pages and services of the company are diverse. ClickFunnels encourages creativity, whether you are simply gathering an email list or promoting a course you created.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do updates cost?
As with any software, ClickFunnels will update from time to time. However, the site offers free updates to clients, so new templates will become available on a routine basis. The software is on the Cloud, so new updates appear automatically.
Do I have to install anything?
ClickFunnels only requires a login and no downloads.
Is this secure?
With all of the features, you are sharing quite a bit of information with ClickFunnels. However, security is a priority, and ClickFunnels is designed to keep subscribers and customers safe and secure.
How long are the contracts?
Since this is a monthly service, there is no long-term contract or commitment. It is possible to cancel at any time.
What does support look like?
ClickFunnels offers 24/7 customer support so clients can always get the answers they need.
What happens if I cancel my account?
Canceling the account renders the data inaccessible. You can download contact files or “pause” the account to keep everything on backup.
What is A/B split testing?
A/B split testing is a tool used to help weed out templates that are not performing well. It helps businesses learn which templates are slow to load so they can be replaced before losing potential customers.
How do I learn how to use ClickFunnels?
Part of the service fee grants access to a plethora of online training videos and more. Even if you are new to content creation and design, ClickFunnels provides the right tools to help get the job done and have your website looking great.
Is ClickFunnels legit?
Finding a scam on the internet is easier than finding something legit, but that is not the case here. Looking solely at the numbers, ClickFunnels is legit. It has hundreds of thousands of users and over 2.5 million search results to its name. It has grown with the internet since its founding in 2014.
Conclusion
Funnels can help your business to grow through leads and conversions. The satisfaction from sales data and SEO analytics will show the investment is worth it. Taking the step to explore this virtual resource could be the move your business needs to grow and blossom in sales.
ClickFunnels is adept at handling online business markets and offers a free trial to showcase this. By checking out the videos and guides during the trials, you will see just what it has to offer. The many benefits outlined here outweigh the costs, plus it is easy to create your free account.
ClickFunnels is designed with the business owner in mind. You have been creative enough to develop a product or service needed in the world, so using this tool helps to showcase that creativity in a different light. There is no design or coding experience needed to get started here. The templates available can be customized as needed and cloned, thus mitigating work on your part. It allows businesses to focus on business while allowing this marketing tool to do its job.
If you need to turn casual browsers into committed clients, look into ClickFunnels and learn just how to turn those clicks into cash.